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Written by
Peter Ellis
Fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Article History
Axminster carpet
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- Related Topics:
- linoleum
- tatami
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floor covering, material made from textiles, felts, resins, rubber, or other natural or man-made substances applied or fastened to, or laid upon, the level base surface of a room to provide comfort, durability, safety, and decoration. Such materials include both handmade and machine-made rugs and carpets and smooth-surfaced floor coverings. Although the words carpet and rug are frequently used interchangeably in referring to textile floor coverings, in modern usage carpets are fastened to the floor and usually cover an entire floor area, and rugs are not fastened and rarely cover the entire floor. Carpets and rugs may be classified as handmade or machine-made. Smooth-surfaced coverings generally adhere to a subfloor and are manufactured as sheet goods or tiles.
Handmade carpets and rugs are usually made by knotting a number of pile tufts to a backing structure so that the loose knot ends form the pile. Mainly produced in Asia and the East, knotted types are often given the general name of Oriental carpets and may be classified according to the country of manufacture, such as Persian (originating in Iran) or Chinese. Well-known districts or towns may give their names to the carpets they produce; the Persian Kermān (Kirman) is an example. Other hand-knotted rugs include the Savonnerie rugs of France and the modern rya rugs of the Scandinavian countries. Handmade rugs woven by the tapestry method, often described as the Aubusson type, for the French town in which the method was perfected, have a flat or slightly ribbed surface instead of pile. Hooked rugs are made by drawing yarn or fabric strands through a basic material so as to form a pile of loops that may be clipped or remain uncut.
Machine-made carpets include such woven types as Axminster and Wilton, and also tufted, knitted, and flocked types. Axminsters resemble hand-knotted carpets, but their pile yarn is mechanically inserted and bound and not knotted. Wilton types may have looped (uncut) or cut pile, with designs formed by bringing yarns of the desired colour to the surface and burying the others beneath the surface. Velvet carpeting is made by looping strands that form the pile over wire strips that are removed as each row of loops is completed. Chenille rugs have soft, deep pile formed by long, furry strips. The pile of tufted carpets is formed by tufts inserted into a backing with needles. In knitted carpets, the backing, locking, and pile yarns are all looped together. Flocked types are produced by systems in which adhesives are used to bind fibres or yarns to the backing fabric.
Smooth-surfaced floor coverings include linoleum, rubber floor coverings, cork tile, asphalt tile, printed felt base, and the vinyl types. Most are available in varying degrees of thickness, usually from 1/16 to 3/16 inch, and may have some form of backing. Although flexible types are available in rolls at least six feet wide, square tiles are increasingly popular in all types. The various materials differ in their ability to take colour or pattern, and mottled or spatter effects are often achieved by blending in one or more mixes of the same general composition as the basic material.
History
Early floor coverings
Prehistoric man may have happened upon a method of forming thread from twisted grass or hair. Evidence obtained from recent excavations near the Caspian Sea indicates that the shearing of sheep and goats, and the spinning and weaving of the fibres obtained, was practiced as early as 6000 bc. Before the development of weaving, fibres were probably interlaced to produce a simple form of plaited basket-work matting, replacing still earlier crude mats made of strands of dry stalks and tendrils.
Findings in burial mounds at Pazyryk in southern Siberia, 2,400 years old, indicate that furs, leather, woven textiles, and felts were used, not as floor coverings, but as wall hangings. The first true carpets, characterized by pile surfaces, were probably rough cured skins that early hunters laid on the floors of their crude dwellings. Most carpets still retain the same tough flexible backings and upright pile, affording protection from cold and hard floors, agreeable to the touch, and serving a decorative function.
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Smooth floorings also have ancient origins. In the Late Bronze Age (1600–1000 bc) water-worn pebbles were laid as flooring in Crete and also on the Greek mainland. The Greeks refined the technique between the 6th and the 4th centuries bc, and ancient decorative pebble mosaics have been found in Greece, Asia Minor, and Sicily. Such mosaics were also made of marble, serpentine alabaster, some forms of granite, and other stones suitable for polishing. Timber flooring, originally used in rough form for a strictly functional purpose, was eventually made into smooth boards, and was later used decoratively in parquetry designs.
